Orient Expression

While much of the world, including some countries that Thailand thinks of as less technologically advanced, are reaping the benefits of 4G; Thailand has yet to get beyond the dabbling stage and jump in with both feet. It seemed to take an eternity to get on to 3G and at least one operator has made the jump to 4G trials.  Now the local regulator has finally (re)set the date for the long awaited auction of the spectrum and details are set to be announced in February. Normally I would be a strong supporter of a free market and all that a regulated market should bring in the way of competition, and therefore when market forces kick in what that then means for consumers in terms of value for money.  However, in this case I am wondering if there is a different answer to the problem. Having watched the mast alliances in Europe and regulator interventions in New Zealand and Australia I think that the antiquated Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) agreements that Thai mobile opera...

Having recently attended a seminar by Catherine Middleton from Ryerson on Australia's NBN initiative it got me thinking about "access as infrastructure". The Australian Government is investing $B's of public and private capital in a national broadband network that is a fibre to the premise platform, although for distant and remote sites it will most likely be a fixed wireless solution.  The proposition from Dr. Middleton is that ubiquitous access will create a platform for services that separates competition from access, sounds like Telco 2.0. The question I posed was if the idea is a common platform but close to 10% of that access will be at 12Mbps rather than 100Mbps (fixed wireless versus fibre) then surely the lowest common denominator will prevail and services will be designed for 12Mbps.  You would then question the rationale of FTTP or FTTH when you could go fixed wireless.  Over time LTE and similar technologies will see an increase in speed that will of...

There's a new beat on the street, the use and benefits of Product Portfolio Management. The current leader is Tribold . The intention is to get products to market faster, this is targeted at Telecom companies with a known time to market problem. The idea centralize the product management function that has a single view and representation of a product. This can then be shared with CRM, OSS and BSS systems. With powerful reporting that can show take up of the offering and the unified product master when CRM, OSS and BSS will be in synch this should be a great boost for offering promotion to market. It's also not limited to telecom as this is a problem that many enterprises face today with disparate applications using the data (CRM, Self Care, Financials, Manufacturing, Distribution). The great enabler for me is that will allow MVNO's to communicate their product vision to OSS and BSS provider of choice. The trend will be for pick best of breed billers for market segments, ...

Once more I find convergence, and I don't mean FMC or any of those other Telco terms, I have found Idea Convergence. Some time ago Paul Jardine talked about "the Other network" an idea he had many years ago, now we have NZ Telecom doing just that. On this blog I have extended the ideas of the Wifi Lightpost and fixed wireless access and Paul raised the idea of TescoMax . Right now WiFi access in Bangkok is far from prolific but with the license given to TTT Broadband they could use some of these ideas to broaden the access to their network. Throughout this sprawling city you can rely on finding one of two things: A petrol station - PTT, Caltex, Shell, Green Leaf etc 7-Eleven - the ubiquitous convenience store And in many locations you can find both i.e. a 7-Eleven at a petrol station. Tie in to these two infrastructure nodes and you have a pretty good grid for your network nodes. Both places by default are in built up urban areas with homes greedy for internet acces...

There is a lot of talk around MVNO's at present. Plus: with the announcement in the UK of 11 (eleven) new GSM licencees in the low power model Dean Bubley of Disruptive Wireless has good dialogue on what this means for the market space around MVNO's. He follows up yesterday with his take on the right time for SME MVNO's , this has long been the case in the wireline market with companies like Energis but the space has already started to develop with players like Genesis . Minus: Sprint Nextel have been very vocal this week in stating their desire to try and slow down the emergence of MVNO's by minmizing their part in the MVNE space. Sprint are one of the key providers of Minutes of Usage (MOU's) that allow some of the new MVNO's in the US to be able to offer the voice and data services that are bundled into their brand centric offering. They wish to observe how the current ones (ESPN, Disney, Helio etc) perform before adding anymore. This in many ways ma...